President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Dr. Dore Gold discusses the spread of Temple Denial and its use as a political tool meant to undermine Israeli claims to the holy city.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT ANTIQUITIES
The Holiest Site of the Jewish People
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem represents the greatest point of sanctity for the Jewish people. King Solomon established the Temple, or Beit Ha-Mikdash, on Mt. Moriah. The Temple had a section known as the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten Commandments and the Torah, was housed. While it stood, Jews were required to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year. After the First Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, Jewish exiles returned to Jerusalem in 538 BCE and completed the construction of the Second Temple in 515 BCE. Even after the Temple's destruction by Roman armies in 70 CE, the site of the Temple remained the direction of Jewish prayer.
The purification of the Temple in Jerusalem is the central theme in the holiday of Hanukkah. Thus, according to Jewish tradition, the sanctity of the Temple Mount area remains intact despite the Temple's destruction. Indeed, Rabbi A.I. Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the pre-state Yishuv, confirmed that the eternal sanctity of the Temple Mount continues to exist.
Islamic Disregard for the Heritage of Others
The Taliban's destruction of ancient Buddhist cultural treasures in the Bamian Valley of Afghanistan during 1998 should have sounded a warning throughout the world over radical Islam's disregard for the religious heritage of others. The Taliban's extremism was partly a result of the influence of their guest, Osama bin Laden, and their Saudi Wahhabi paymasters more generally.
Israel has witnessed a similar and more widespread pattern of actions by Islamists in support a pre-eminent, if not exclusive, Islamic claim to the Holy Land:
-In Nazareth, Muslim zealots have sought since 1997 to construct a large mosque that would dwarf the Christian Basilica of the Annunciation.
-On October 7, 2000, after constant attacks by Palestinian mobs, the Jewish holy site of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem) was sacked and burned, and later converted into a mosque. Five days later, the ancient Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho was sacked and burned by Palestinians.
-Rachel's Tomb at the Jerusalem-Bethlehem border has come under repeated Palestinian sniper attack.
-In April 2002, Palestinian Tanzim gunmen from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and controlled the site for weeks at gunpoint.
However, the activities by the Muslim Waqf and the Israeli Muslim movement on the Temple Mount represent an unprecedented attempt to deny any legitimacy to the ancient Jewish heritage in Jerusalem.
After September 2000, the Muslim Waqf closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then, in order to complete new underground mosques at the site, it removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.
The intention is to turn the entire 36-acre Temple Mount compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past, including the destruction of archeological findings that are proof of this past.
In a country where construction projects may be held up for months out of concern for the preservation of antiquities, the free hand given the Muslim Waqf to destroy Jewish artifacts at Judaism's holiest site is hard to comprehend.
Please read the full article:
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=1...
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9:04The Destruction of the Templeby DrDavidNeiman4,144 views
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